wXw Fans Appreciation Night 2017

FRANCIS KASPIN vs. DIRTY DRAGAN (w/Young Money Chong) - 5.5/10

This was a fun opener. Emil Sitoci had ordered Dragan to get the win tonight, so Dragan decided he would pay tribute to Sitoci while doing so by getting the win with Sitoci's signature Snapmare Driver, and even had Young Money Chong get up on the apron and hold up a big sign that said "EMIL" on it... and so of course Kaspin was able to use the extra time it took the heels to set this up to recover enough to reverse the Snapmare Driver by shoving Dragan into Chong, after which Kaspin hit Dragan with his finisher and got the win.

The heels came out first and Tarkan Aslan cut a promo in German. I don't speak German, but he seemed to be demanding that the crowd respect them. When the babyfaces came out, RISE members John Klinger and Ivan Kiev attacked them from behind. We got a RISE beat-down that included Kiev damaging Kim Ray's knee with a chair. A4 were able to make something of a comeback on their own, and Kiev half dragged/half brawled with Ray out a side door. Ray's mobility despite getting his knee hit wihta chair twice was problematic to me, as was the lack of presence of Jurn Simmons- who we saw in all of the video packages with A4 and Ray insisting that they all had to work together to negate RISE's big advantage over them- the fact that RISE is a coherent unit and they are not. You'd think that part of that would involve saving the others from a RISE beat-down, but apparently not.
Eventually Klinger and Aslan both disappeared, leaving us with...

A4 vs. RISE (Pete Bouncer & Lucky Kid) - 7/10

They had a pretty great back-and-forth tag team match. Tarkan Aslan eventually reappeared, first leaving one of the tag title belts in the corner, then distracting the referee so Lucky Kid could hit Andy in the head with it, but it was only good enough for a nearfall. Andy was eventually able to make a hot tag to Ali-Ani, who ran wild.

Tarkan would later try to take advantage of another referee distraction to toss a title belt to Bouncer but Andy intercepted it and nailed Bouncer with it, which was a nice callback to the finish of A4's title match against the Young Lions at Fight Forever Tour: Opening in which Andy stopped one of the Young Lions from using a title belt as a weapon and then nailed one of them with the belt, but the referee saw it and disqualified A4. This time the referee didn't see it, and Andy was able to go for a cover and would have gotten the pinfall had Tarkan not reached into the ring and pulled him off. The referee didn't see this, either, but he was able to take a good guess at what happened and thus ejected Tarkan from ringside. The match continued for a short bit until A4 hit a crazy-looking big finisher and Andy pinned Bouncer while Al-Ani held Lucky Kid at bay.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT - Good. Because the heels' attempts had cheating had resulted in their wXw World Tag Team Championship belts being in or around the ring while the champs themselves were way up the aisle, A4 grabbed the belts and laid them down in the ring, daring the Young Lions to come get them. The heels were unwilling to get into the ring with the babyface again and backed off. Their point now made, A4 then backed away themselves and resumed celebrating their win, allowing the heels to take their belts back and slink off in shame.

BOBBY GUNNS vs. TIMOTHY THATCHER - 6.75/10

A solid technical wrestling match, with Gunns' victory here- making Timothy Thatcher tap out cleanly- feeling like a big step up for him.

These guys had quite the awesome weapons match, and the crowd was appropriately hot for it. The story of the match was Avalanche working over Ilja's back by both hitting him with weapons and throwing him through things. Ilja, as always, was the babyface with the indomitable will, always refusing to stay down no matter how hurt he was and showing us all once again why they call him "unbesiegbar."

Starr and Kiev charged at each other as soon as the bell rang and started laying into each other while Flip stayed out of the way. Once Starr had dealt with Kiev, Flip started doing his stupid repeated kip-ups spot... and then, when he was done, Starr just chopped him and knocked him down. He then proceeded to do one backwards roll to mock Flip.

They had a good three-way, although it was mostly them taking turns with two guys going a singles match while a third was on the outside. Flip really felt like an interloper here, with the heat all being between Kiev and Starr. John Klinger came out to distract Starr, and Kiev hit his finisher on Flip to win Starr's title. This was yet another moment that makes it seem like they were planning to build to Starr getting as hot at Klinger but it never happened. RISE celebrated together, now holding all of the titles in wXw.

They had a brawl of a match that just brushes up against my minimum threshold for a main event. Maybe too much of a brawl, at times, as they were fighting all the way onto the stage without being counted out. RISE, of course, interfered, and Lucky Kid grabbing the referee should have been a DQ as soon as the ref got free. A4 came out soon afterwards and mostly fought RISE off by themselves. I found the tow of them being the only ones who showed up a little odd, since even if Kim Ray's knee is injured, we did just see David Starr get screwed out of a championship by RISE so you'd think he'd want to come fight them as well.

Klinger and Jurn continued to have their brawl until we got a re bump and RISE came back. They were quickly followed by A4. There was a big brawl which was won by the heels via their numbers advantage and hitting the babyfaces with the title belts. Klinger got the win, and I was honestly surprised by the crowd's reaction. On the opening night of this tour they had seemed very "okay... you've made your point with this interference stuff, but please tone it down in the main events from now on" and this match certainly didn't do that, but the fans didn't respond negatively to the interference (in a non-kayfabe way, I mean. They were either heel fans happy the heels won, or babyface fans angry the heels cheated, not angry at the promotion for booking so much interference in their world title match main event).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT - Decent. RISE beat the babyface up some more until Ilja Dragunov and David Starr came out to make the save, and all five heels- four of them holding title belts they had just used as weapons- ran away from two unarmed babyfaces. This solidified Starr as part of the anti-RISE camp (although, like I said above, I'm not sure why that didn't happen during the main event itself), and shifts Ilja to being an anti-RISE guy as well, rather than just someone going for the world title which a member of RISE happens to hold right now.

Final Thoughts
This was a decent little show from wXw. Everything was solid and it moved the storylines along well, but only the Ilja vs. Avalanche Street Fight is really worth going out of your way to watch.